ABSTRACT
The history of Sparta through most of the classical period is largely one of success, in her own terms. Spartans themselves may deliberately have encouraged the view that they were simple, obedient, soldiers; Thucydides represents the Spartan king Arkhidamos as boasting of the way in which ignorance in certain areas promoted the sound judgement of his people. The need to keep the helots obediently at work imposed several aspects of Sparta’s foreign policy. The idea of Spartan stupidity is, in any case, difficult to maintain if people consider the scale and duration of Sparta’s ascendancy and the smallness of the citizen population with which the ascendancy was achieved. The Spartans in their homeland had a perennial problem. A modern ruling group, if similarly dependent on a large and hostile population, might protect its position by the use of informers, of terror and of superior technology.
